If you've got this far through the Anita Blake series, you can hardly complain or be surprised to discover that 80% of the book is, basically, erotica. The first few chapters start off well, there's an oasis in the middle where Anita is doing her actual job, and the story concludes in the last 10 chapters. The rest of the book deals with Anita's... other side, shall we say. It's as if in each book she needs to "level up" to deal with the new threat, and (as Jean-Claude points out), Belle Morte's line of vampires only have one way to do that... ( )

http://allbookedup-elena.blogspot.com... ( )

By far my favorite book in the series. This is the book where my view of Anita changed, and where I think she made the most dramatic change in coming to accept her life the way it is now and seeing the things that are good in it, as well as growing up enough to work towards keeping them rather than sabotaging herself and her relationships. ( )

I thought I was done with Ms. Hamilton for a while, then I realized that I got this for Christmas. Same complaint still applies. Somewhere along the way she started to sacrifice plot for a lot of sex. I miss the plot! Please, tone down the sex and give us some story! ( )

Really not as good as the earlier books in the series. The plot is almost unrecognizable and unresolved. But I'm still interested to see where Anita will go. ( )

Even I've reached my "this series has really gotten out of control" threshold. I won't stop reading it though. I like Anita too much. ( )

LŐJETEK LE!!! ( )

I wish I had stuck to my "I'll try one more after Narcissus". I didn't; even though I disliked Cerulean Sins, I thought I'd give it one more go.

To paraphrase a tongue-in-cheek editorial review over on Amazon: It's unfair to say Incubus Dreams is just one sex scene after another. They don't start until page 89 and then they pause on page 377 to let a little bit of mystery to show.

Unless a review of a future volume indicates that this series has moved from erotica back to action, I'm done with it. ( )

I hedged between 7 and 8 for this particular book but finally settled on 7 since I don't feel it measures up to LKH's past work. Though others have claimed it's awful, I just like LKH's writing style way too much to give this book anything less than a 7.

That said, there was very little substance to the story beyond the Ardeur. I'm not saying that that was the only story line, but it was the primary one, and it took up at least 75% of the book, which is a quite hefty 658 pages to begin with. Many people were turned off by all the sex in this book... that in itself didn't bother me, heck I love steamy sex scenes, but again I felt that it was too much!

Overall, I wouldn't have minded the book being a few hundred pages shorter, and the various story lines and subplots brought more into balance. Granted, the Ardeur and it's effects on Anita's life significantly impact her, but it definitely took up too much of this book at the expense of the other things that were going on.

Anita herself crosses a few more personal boundary lines she hadn't thought she'd ever cross, and has a few more introspective revelations about herself. And there is a sadistic killer on the loose, with female strippers as the target vic. Ronnie and Louie have some personal issues come up. Nathaniel becomes a more prominent character, and is growing into a more independent and stronger person as well. I really like him so I was happy to see a bigger focus on him in this book.

I could never find LKH's writing boring though... even now I'm hedging toward switching my rating on this back towards an 8. Heck, I give it a 7 1/2 then! :) And yes, I'll continue to buy future Anita books... especially since in this book, Anita seems to finally be getting a handle on the Ardeur, and a bit more control over it. ( )

It is unfortunate when you stick with a series for so long (this is the 12th Anita Blake novel) and the author goes in a direction that is baffling to me. I know sex sells, BUT Anita has 6 separate regular sex partners at this point. AND she takes on strangers too! I kept sifting through the pages for STORY and PLOT, but found sex scene after sex scene. Anita used to be an awesome investigator, a strong woman working with (or against) the police force and the FBI. By this point in the series she's a just (inexplicibly) the object of desire for half of dozen men who want no other but her. I think LKH jumped the shark here. I am going to try and read her next few in hopes that Anita stays out of bed once in a while. ( )

So-so. I miss the action ( )

Again, as with the last, this book didn't have a strong beginning to end plot. It went along with Anita as she learned about her growing powers, but as you're reading, you can forget sometimes that she's in the middle of an investigation.
I love the characters, so I'm not upset that the plotline isn't as strong, but the book isn't something that you cannot put down. It's a good read, but it's a bit weak. There's alot of sex, but it could use some more drive. ( )

The Anita Blake series is starting to feel rather as though Hamilton has set herself the challenge of getting more sex, in more ways, combinations, places and species combinations, into each book as it comes along. Touch of writer's block? Oh, launch another orgy and graft another sex-related power onto the heroine, the resulting couple of pages of gratuitous blow-by-blow detailed kinky sex will give you time to figure out what the plot is doing... I don't have anything against sex in books, but there's just. too. much. in. here. The series started out great, but I'm not inclined to rush out and buy the next one, I'm afraid. ( )

I agree that this book wasn't on par with the previous Anita books, but it did have some good aspects. First, Richard has finally moved past whining baby and took a role in the story. In addition, Anita comes to terms with her relationship with the "monsters." She was a little too self-righteous before (she didn't think vampires were alive, and most deserved to die, but she was in love with Jean-Claude?) Now she seems to see that a white picket fence, married with 2.5 kids doesn't have to be everyone's life, even hers. Plus she became more accepting of her friends' natures. And unlike other reviewers, I was glad Edward didn't resurface--he's a minor character and should stay that way. He is too one-dimensional to be more than that.

That said, the book did have major issues. The typos were definitely a pain. The editor, not the author, should be shot! After Damian took center stage as part of a new triumverate, he did just "disappear" from the plot. I don't mind a lot of sex among the principles (Jean-Claude, Anita, Asher, Micah etc.). However, Anita having sex with people she just met was a stretch! Why did she have sex with Byron when Nathanial was right there? And Requiem!? Come on!

I recommend buying the book if you are a completeist (I have them all in hardcover so...), or a die-hard fan. Otherwise, wait for the paperback. It IS worth reading as a bridge between Cerulean Sins and the next installment. ( )

From Amazon:
"As Incubus Dreams opens, Anita Blake may be America's most powerful vampire hunter and necromancer. So it's no surprise that the Regional Preternatural Crime Investigation Team seeks her assistance when a St. Louis stripper is murdered and the evidence points to unusual serial killers: a group of seven vampires. It appears a master vampire has gone rogue and may prove too powerful for Anita Blake, even if she can gain help from not only her vampire consort, Master of the City Jean-Claude, but from the wereleopard king Micah, her other lover, and the alpha werewolf Richard, her bitter ex-lover.
It would be an exaggeration to say that Laurell K. Hamilton's Incubus Dreams is just one sex scene after another. This twelth novel in her bestselling Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series presents a wedding, a murder, and a lot of relationship angst before getting down and dirty on page 89; and the sex scenes pause on page 377 to let the mystery plot resume. The series deftly blends elements of alternate history, horror, romance, erotica, and mystery, but anyone reading Incubus Dreams for the murder plot is going to be frustrated. However, Incubus Dreams is a considerably stronger and more interesting book than its talky predecessor, Cerulean Sins, and fans will enjoy the many new developments in Anita's complicated love life."

That sums it up quite nicely. Not much of an exaggeration. A little sleuthing, 300 pages of porn, a little more sleuthing. The porn was good, the sleuthing like-wise, I am thinking thought that the two would have been better served in separate books. By the time the story turned back to the initial crime, I had pretty much forgotten that it had ever happened. It caught me by surprise, as if I had just stumbled over another book. I still enjoyed it, but there was not a lot of cohesion to the whole thing. ( )

I liked this book marginally better than the last one. (Part of that may be because I didn't spend money on this book; it was a gift from a friend.) The high points were Anita's philosophical and nice little musings on the men in her life, one conversation about Zane (beloved character of mine), and that was just about it. I really do find Anita annoying, and I didn't realize why until I read a review from a reader on Amazon, who said that Anita is selfish in her relationships and unfair at times. There is also a profuse amount of sex scenes in this novel, none of which are sexy. The way Hamilton writes them as a step-by-step process with no emotion evolvement and way too much metaphysics makes them not very interesting to read. The police work in this novel felt very tacked on, and I don't like how Anita's relationships with everyone but the people she's sleeping with are deteriorating. And, of course, she's rarely ever to blame for the loss of previously important friendships. I'll always love what this series used to be, but I can't stand what it has become. ( )

If you can't handle Anita getting fucked every which way from Sunday, DO NOT read this book. Yeesh. I suspect Hamilton did a lot of masturbation while writing this book. I mean the title does have "incubus" in it, so it should have been a giveway - but this is the one where Anita "gives it all away."

I sort of re-realized at some point midway through this one that any kind of barrier Anita sets up for herself (she usually says them out loud like "I don't do furries.", and then other people repeat them a lot), she WILL eventually break.

On the non-sex side (which is getting harder to find...I REALLY wish she'd do away with the fucking ardeur bit - can't there be a supernatural book without hyper-sexualizing everything??), there were some interesting plot developments with respect to her crazy powers, and to Richard, and an ending I actually kind of liked. ( )

Incubus Dream finally got me to a point where the sex is starting to aggravate me in this series. I think Hamilton can get her point across about the ardeur without having the whole book be nothing but about sex. What I missed most in this book was the good police mystery part. Don't get me wrong, there was a mystery but it want barely there as if the sex stuff had been written and she found a way to write in an actual case to work on. It just took away from the other stuff I love so much about Anita. I enjoyed her finally getting it on with Nathaniel because her moral choices just don't make much sense, which the character admits herself, and Anita really does love Nathaniel. It's just frustrating when the story didn't seem to have a point alot of the time except for all of Anita's new powers which revolve around sex. Most people have talked bad about the way the character was going before now but it was really, really evident in this book. I'm going to continue with the series but only because the past eleven titles have been so great. ( )

Vampire Hunter Anita Blake discovers new levels of power, another triumverate, and secrets about those around her. ( )

If she wants to write what someone on a forum I saw somewhere called Fangfuckers, that is fine.

Don't dress them up as monster hunting books though, and call a
spade a spade, and throw in the erotica word. Will that hurt sales that
badly? If she put out a line of books purely focused on women shagging monsters, can't imagine she wouldn't do really well with it, as she seems to have some talent in that area.

The plot here is of the thin crust variety, no doubt about it.
Personally, in a ghost busting or monster hunting book, I want some
stuff to happen.

http://superprose.blogspot.com/2007/0... ( )

Anita investigates a series of stripper murders while dealing with the ardeur – meaning LOTS of sex. Not a whole lot of plot but does close out a few story lines. OK. ( )

They just get worse and worse. I loved the first 9 parts of the series and then it just goes downhill from there. This 12th part doesn't have a clear storyline, the plot is very weak and uninteresting and what little there is of a story is only there to connect Anita from one lover to the next. Despite the ardeur explanation it goes so totally against Anita's character and morals that were displayed in the earlier books, that I am getting annoyed. I hope Ms Hamilton finds back to her old self and gives us some more good Anita Blake books. ( )

I bought this on spring break when I was looking for something trashy in the drug store to read. It was precisely what I was looking for. The actual mystery/detective part of the story takes maybe 10% of the story, the rest is silly sex. But it's better written than some sex, and isn't as repetitive as it could be, so I was more than ok with that. I haven't read any of the others in the series, however.

The Anita Blake series blends the conventions of detective stories, romance and horror. In previous books the balance of the plot was provided by the detective/horror parts. This one... well I was going to say it was all romance, but actually its turned into erotica, or possibly porn. No longer about the relationship, just about repetitive sex, with many men, some of whom the readers and the character barely know. The detective aspect was pretty much ignored, the horror just provides different flavours of sex (shapeshifter and vampire), plus the excuse for there being so much sex. She's a succubus you see, she can't help it.
That's actually my least favourite part. I mean to have a story about a woman who shags a lot of guys, no worries. To have some shiny magic excuse for it, as if there were any need for an excuse... just tired and dumb.

The sad part is the early books in the series are rather good. It took a few books for the author's tendency to see 'add another power' as character development to become apparent, let alone annoying. But after 'Obsidian Butterfly' it all went rather downhill. By this book the writer has fairly literally lost the plot. If it ever gets back to the ass kicking detective stories I might read the series again, but that aspect isn't the one holding teh author's attention any more. ( )

Ok, what happened here Ms. Hamilton? Anita is suddenly a slut/whore? I did not really like this book much at all. I was very disappointed. I'm all for sex, but come on!!
*Update* Ok I tried to re-read this to prepare for the next in the series, and I couldn't even get through it..and I have re-read every other book in this series 3 or 4 times each! ( )